Health Wonk Review: Tales of the Trump

March 10, 2016

Had enough of Donald Trump by now? Well, you’d better do something about it unless you want to have to listen to him for another four years or more. I start this Health Wonk Review off with a couple Trumpy topics before moving on to the usual wonkery.

Trump may be the first major party candidate with fascist tendencies, but his healthcare proposals are just the usual Republican pap with a few pieces of Obamacare and socialism thrown in for good measure.

As Health Care Renewal tells it, many nutritional supplements are akin to the old snake oil remedies. Consumers are fooled by the positioning of these products as health-promoting when they may be nothing of the sort. It may not surprise you that Donald Trump was behind a dubious vitamin selling scheme.

Artificial Intelligence is a threat to many jobs, including workers comp claims adjusters. But those claims adjusters won’t be needed anyway if all the jobs are done by bots! Workers’ Comp Insider lays out the case.

Forcing everyone on Medicaid into managed care sounds oh-so-obvious, but Wright on Health thinks Iowa will be in for a Kansas-style surprise after flipping the switch on April Fool’s Day.

The Affordable Care Act makes it easier for women to access midwives and freestanding birth centers. Healthinsurance.org sheds light on the particulars.

Health Access takes big health plans to task, with a focus on those bad boys at Anthem Blue Cross and Cigna. Advocates want to keep the companies from getting bigger until they get better.

From the “Chutzpah in Health Care Financing Dept” Insureblog reports on how an Oregon CO-OP is suing the Feds after being shorted on Risk Corridor funds.

Colorado Health Insurance Insider informs us that health plans are more confident in their risk pools in states with state-run exchanges. Those states may be doing more adequate eligibility verification than Healthcare.gov. Perhaps by 2017, the changes that the federal exchange is implementing will make enough of a difference that carriers will no longer find it necessary to try to avoid enrollments occurring during special enrollment periods.

Finally, I published my 11th annual birthday post on the Health Business Blog, featuring my favorite post from each of the last 12 months.

David might I suggest leaving politics out of your blogs. You have added to the division in america pushing an agenda which has us deciding on a so called right wing facist or liberal left wing nuts. You need to do better than that.

Brent is right. Your politics aren’t helpful. The sitting President has been using executive orders and cozying up to big business making some types of alliances with them. Many would call those actions fascistic as well. If you want to criticize, criticize with policy. (I’m not a Trump supporter)